I certainly was not prepapred for how hard it would be to lose him. It felt like a bomb had hit, one I had no idea was coming even with months of preparing for all possible outcomes.
Many people know me well, they know the mother I am: the organic, protective crazy woman armed with research on screen viewing and young brains and who slept with her oldest until he was seven and nursed him until he was five. So one can imagine what it might have been like for me to leave my baby in the hospital with strangers to never see him again.
I was blown to bits, I didnt recognize myself at all. I don't cry easy, and I cried for five days straight.
Everything I thought I would feel was not present at all, but instead replaced with utter grief. I didn't want to see anyone I loved except those that were present at his birth. It was as if they were there with me when the bomb exploded and because of that, I felt drawn closer to them and wanted them around all the time.
I have been broken-hearted, sad, and depressed before, but loss is different.
I spend a lot of my days attempting to hold normal conversations with people about everyday things like the car breaking down or about their recent vacation, or even my recent vacation, but most of the time I want to scream, "do you know what just happened, my baby died!"
So here are some things I want you to know about the person I am now, who somedays is not anyone I recognize:
- My love for Elijah and Jonah had nothing to do with Noah "It's a happy life, but someone is missing. It's a happy life AND someone is missing." -Elizabeth McCracken
- I count every day of what would have been his life, I always know exactly how old he would have been and so does the rest of my family. I think we always will "Your friends may say 'time heals all wounds'. No it doesn't, but eventually you will feel better. You'll be yourself again. Your child will still be dead." -Elizabeth McCracken
- When people don't mention him or what just happened to us, it makes me feel isolated and alone in this reality. You cannot remind me that he died, I feel it all the time "Our child dies a second time when noone speaks his name." -Mitch Carmody
- How I approach life with my children has differed, at least internally. I no longer think, "that won't happen to me" or "everything will be fine". In fact, there is an intense video in my head anytime there is any danger anywhere close. I visualize it happening and feel for a moment that it just has. I have to remind myself before I react that it hasn't happened yet and approach my children in that way. The other day Elijah was acting as bat boy for his dad's team and I almost stopped him because I was so sure he was going to get hit by the bat of the player on deck. I have visualizations of my boys dying from such injuries. I know some of this is normal for all mothers, but the panic that accompanies it now is different. "Once you have been on the losing side of great odds, you never find statistics comforting again." -Elizabeth McCracken
- I have read a lot and remarkably all of what I have read has been raw, and comforting, and has allowed me to know that I am not alone and I will survive this. Mostly though, the authors have taught me so much about being present for someone as they grieve. Before Noah, I never would have known what to do, now, I think I understand. "On good days I can look ahead and understand that I will always be becoming who I am. On good days, grief is part of me that I can learn to carry. But I am wise enough to know that I will need you to restore me to myself on the bad days, when the most I can do is so much less" -Elyria Rose
While it is true that people have to go back to their lives and cannot be there in a way that I always want, it is also true that I am so fortunate for what I have experienced since his diagnosis and his death. I was not told, like many woman that I had to get over it when leaving the hospital or to move on because of my other children. Instead I have countless cards, phone calls, dinners, flowers, and love. Instead I have the love and understanding of an enormous tribe.
- I have friends who have left their families for days to be with me
- I have family who dropped everything to fly hundreds of miles to meet their nephew/cousin not knowing if they would ever get to see him again or if they would even get to see the color of his eyes
- I have midwives who climbed into bed to hold me while I cried
- I have women who have faced the same fate and whom have become a family I never would have wanted and who came over and shared there stories so we could cry together
- I have a therapist who came to the hospital and to my house to hold my hand while my body healed and milk dropped from my breasts and gave us a beautiful piece of art to hold our memories of Noah inside
- I have mothers from my school holding their own babies who hugged me simultaneously despite the fact that facing baby death must have ripped them apart from the inside out
I know I will survive not despite Noah, but because of him. Because of what he gave others who in return gave to me.
Noah is now: a urn, a quilt hanging above my bed, a dream catcher, a memory keeper. He is a picture of a pregnant belly, a friend's watercolor picture painted of cloud boy. He is river rocks I collect. He is the blanket he was wrapped in. He is a garden and a treehouse. He is irreversible lessons about life, love, connection, longing, and loss. What a legacy for someone who never took a breathe outside my womb.
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